To ban or not to ban?

Yet another school shooting has occurred, this time by a professor in Mississippi. A Delta State University professor, Shannon Lamb, shot and killed the woman he lived with as well as a fellow professor. There was no motive, at least not yet, other than a possible love triangle. This of course brings up the topic that we all fight the worst over—should we ban firearms? I’ll give my piece on the topic and then throw it into a river, never to speak of it again.

There are two sides of every argument—yes to banning firearms or no to keeping them legal. Both have good points that seem reasonable enough, at least for now until the future changes when one argument outweighs the other. We’ll start with why keeping firearms legal might be a good thing.

Firearms have been a tradition that America likes to sport around the most, namely hunting. I myself used to hunt with my dad, getting up early in the cold months to sit in a tree stand for hours watching the snow fall. It was all rather dull for a while, other than freezing my butt off and watching even the slightest movement between trees.

A lot of times we saw squirrels, sometimes it was a doe if they were in season. Then, you see the shadows moving and all of a sudden you see those horn racks, a sight for a kid. As I aimed for the heart of the deer, I cleared my mind of all distractions and noises. I fired, and the deer jolted into the woods.

We followed after him and luckily he did not go very far, it was a clean shot to the heart and he didn’t suffer. He was lying there in the snow, some blood trickled from his mouth and nose but very little.

As I gazed upon him, there was a realization that I had just killed something for the first time and he was never wasted. I took this as a life lesson—killing should never be wasteful. Firearms for the hunting man is something that I believe should be preserved, however the kind of firearm takes up issue.

By M&R Glasgow, flickr.com

Firearms may be a tradition, but that is not a tradition of automatic weaponry or side arms that are used to kill other human beings. A huntsman’s rifle provides food for a family and preserves a man’s life, whereas an automatic weapon takes a man’s life.

There is no reason for any civilian to own a weapon of war; concealed handguns, however, are more difficult. Concealed handguns provide protection just like any other concealed weaponry, all with a license of course, but they emit a presence of paranoia. Everyone knows that when someone buys a handgun for the sole purpose of protecting himself or herself, they do not fully trust anyone.

When someone actually sees that concealed weapon, they will feel threatened. What do people do when they feel threatened? They buy a firearm and do exactly the same thing. If everyone is walking around with a firearm, perhaps we should send our children to school with firearms because all the other kids might have them. It’s a cycle of destruction, an argument that I feel can be appeasing.

Personally, I do not feel any laws will be changed nor any gun laws more harshly regulated, as there are far too many “ifs” and “buts” in the process. Pennsylvania already has a concealed weapon law that has proved to be non-lethal, or at least it has not yet been tested.

Until something very ground breaking shakes every American culturally and/or personally, gun laws will not change. Who’s to say if that really will determine our future though. No one really knows the future. Maybe someday we’ll need the weaponry; maybe someday we won’t.